Monday, May 7, 2012

Every once in a great while, I get a food wish from someone
I admire and respect so much that I just can’t say no. This “Pad Thai” popcorn
recipe was their latest request, and as always, I was more than thrilled to
make this very influential person’s snack dream come true. Who is this mystery
foodie? Me!

I was channel surfing late one night, and caught the very tail
end of a show featuring a hot spot in Charleston, SC, called The Gin Joint. The
theme was unique bar eats, and the host was talking about something called,
“Pad Thai” popcorn. What was that?

I heard those words, and saw maybe five seconds of footage
of what looked like caramel corn in a basket, and that was it. Frustrated, but
quite excited, I jumped online to find the bar’s website, and hopefully the
recipe. Nothing.

There were a few links with people talking about it, and a
couple cell pictures, but no actual official recipe to be found. So, I decided
to give myself a food wish – figure out how to recreate this
extraordinary-sounding snack. I decided to simply fortify a standard caramel
corn recipe with peanuts, lime, hot chilies, fish sauce, and cilantro.

Maybe it was beginner’s luck, or the collective
consciousness of all the poor souls who’ve tasted that popcorn and desperately
wished they could make it at home, but it came out incredibly well. Crispy,
crunchy, sweet, spicy, aromatic, and awesome! You know I’m a fan of the
hyperbole, but it’s with all sincerity that I say, this may be the greatest
caramel popcorn-related snack breakthrough since balls.

By the way, since this was my first attempt, please feel
free to adjust the ingredients amounts and report back. I think next time I’ll
add a bit more lime and fish sauce, for a little extra kick. I may also explore using tamarind juice and/or palm sugar. Anyway, I hope you
give this unbelievably addictive “Pad Thai” popcorn a try soon. Enjoy!

34 comments:

Now that just plain looks amazing. I'm a total popcorn snob, tweaking recipes to get just the right balance of spices for what I'm craving. Portion control really has to come online for me. I will be trying this and reporting back, though I must say that there will be no cilantro involved. The evil herb can just ruin the nicest dishes for me. I might try a bit of thai basil, though...

Hi JohnJust started following your blog - Tried the Creamy Tomato Tuna Penne for dinner! Amazing recipe. Thank you so muchHave you considered using palm sugar instead of brown sugar? Like the comment regarding the use of Tamarind﻿ sauce, I think this might give a more authentic taste, as the basis of pad thai sauce is just: Tamarind, Palm sugar, Fish sauce :)Keep up the good work

i found a recipe online that called for microwaving the popcorn after the sauce is on it (instead of baking). That seems more streamlined, and the comments said it works. i'm curious what you think of the microwave idea.(it's from allrecipes - not sure if you accept links in comments so I'm leaving it out).

I did a Beijing Duck version of this with duck fat, maltose and hoisin sauce instead of your ingredients... It was awesome...I might do a Sichuan version at some point, that'll blow people's socks off!

This is so delicious. We had only one lime, but we did have kaffir lime leaves, so we used the zest of one lime, plus a few very finely chopped kaffir lime leaves. Also added about a tablespoon of tamarind paste to the caramel sauce. Delicious and addictive.

Lesson Learned:First off, the taste of this popcorn as I'm eating it is great. BUT, if you find yourself with a late night craving for popcorn and start making this dish and then get too tired to wait for it to cool, do not...DO NOT let it cool in the oven on foil. What a sticky mess the next day. The parts that were salvageable were great. :)

Hey, Chef John, or anyone who can answer my questions, for that matter, I'd like to know if these substitutes are usable: Instead of chilli - A small chilli cut in relatively small pieces. I know you mentioned that you can use fresh chillies, but they didn't disintegrate, or however you want to say it, and it didn't mix with the cara,el syrup, having separate small chillies scattered across the popcorn.Instead of corn syrup - Honey. I live in a country where there's about 2 bottles of corn syrup in the entire country. So I looked up substitues, and honey popped up. BUT, I did not have that watery, glaze like, honey, I had it in it's wet sand like form, tou probably know what I'm talking about. It seemed to melt into that watery form overtime, because of oxygen I guess, it only melted when I exposed the honey to it.Instead of cilantro - Basilik. I also saw it as a substitute for cilantro, and once again, I live in a country in which schoolkids, people at home and prisoners, eat all the same thing.Instead of vegetable oil - Olive oil.

Just made the recipe..good stuff!! However, like almost every cook, I made some slight changes... I grew up in Thailand, have lived there for over 30 years and developed a taste for the sour/hot/pungent elements of cruisine; so I essentially doubled the lime juice, zest, fish sauce and dry Thai chili. It took a little longer to thicken up, but gave me a 'punchier' glaze. BTW Just so you know, sambal oelek is Indonesian. There is a similar wet chili product in Thailand but it is a bit different than the sambal.

This recipe has become an annual Christmas tradition for me - I make it for my Mom every year and she loves and looks forward to it - so do I :) I pretty much make it as directed except that my Mom has a deathly peanut/nut allergy, so sans the peanuts (though one of these days I'm going to get around to making a batch WITH peanuts for myself!) It's the only caramel popcorn I really like, regular old stuff is just so bleh compared to this deliciousness.